Tag Archives: mob museum

What is “Know Your Business” (KYB)?

I run in circles that use the acronym KYB, or “Know Your Business.” But I realize that many of you don’t use this acronym every day, so I thought I would explain it.

Let’s say that you encounter a business such as ByteDance or HiveLLM or Lorem Ipsum and you want to know more about it.

There are good reasons to understand a business before engaging with it.

“As financial institutions and other businesses have known for years, there are services such as “Know Your Customer” and “Know Your Business” that organizations can use. 

“KYC and KYB let companies make sure they’re dealing with real people, and that the business is legitimate and not a front for another company—or for a drug cartel or terrorist organization.”

Even if you’re not dealing with extremist terrorists, you may want to have a better understanding of where the business is and/or who runs the business. Remembering that the legal owner of the business may not be the one who is actually operating it. For example, the Mob Museum documents the original ownership of the late Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas:

“Miami hotelier Ben Jaffe (part owner of the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach) owned the land on which the casino would sit, but Conquistador Inc. would build and operate the resort.

“It just so happened that Conquistador’s owner, “Dandy” Phil Kastel, had a long and fruitful partnership with Frank Costello, perhaps the nation’s most infamous gangster in the spring of 1957…. And it almost goes without saying that most ‘Miami hotel men’ who came to Las Vegas in this era were more than familiar with Meyer Lansky, another famous gangland name.”

Unfortunately for Costello, people soon knew HIS business:

“On May 2, 1957, while entering a New York apartment building, Costello was shot and wounded by Vincent “the Chin” Gigante on orders from rival Mafia boss Vito Genovese. Written on a piece of paper found by police inside Costello’s coat pocket was the exact gross win from the Tropicana as of April 27, 1957 — $651,284, less $153,745 in markers (loans to players), with the proceeds from slot machines at $62,844. The note mentioned $30,000 for “L” and $9,000 for “H,” likely money to be skimmed on behalf of Costello’s underworld partner Meyer Lansky and perhaps for Mob-connected Teamsters union boss James Hoffa. It was a big national news story.”

It’s best to know your business BEFORE it’s splashed all over the media.

Ajay Patel, Sarah Kane, and the Mob

Last week I enjoyed a three-day vacation from my day job, so I had the opportunity to join SMA’s weekly Town Hall. (I am still officially an SMA Associate, on inactive status.)

SMA Town Halls usually begin with an “Art Talk,” and last week’s Art Talk focused on art in Las Vegas.

Coincidentally, I was leaving for Las Vegas later that day.

Sarah Kane’s presentation last week covered the Mob Museum.

Coincidentally, I had reservations to visit that museum on Saturday.

When I shared this in the Town Hall chat, Ajay Patel requested that I share pictures of my visit. Here they are.

This parking lot wall depicts the history of Las Vegas. Kane had nicer pictures in her Art Talk; cars obscured much of the wall when I visited.

The museum is located in a historic Post Office building that also hosted a courtroom. More on that later.

Mugshots, early 20th century.

This wall was the backdrop from Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. The bricks were subsequently relocated to Las Vegas.

If you don’t know why this ticket from the 1919 World Series is in the National Mob Museum, look it up.

Lest you think that all mob activity was centered in Chicago, there may have been a little mob activity in Las Vegas also. Some of the casinos from the 1940s and later had questionable financing (and questionable accounting), and the aforementioned courtroom was the site of hearings chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver.

If you’ve worked for a couple of facial recognition/video surveillance companies (the I and N companies come to mind), you’ve probably compared a picture from an early Whitey Bulger arrest to a later picture of Bulger. He ended up in prison in his later years, and did not survive the experience.

El Chapo was in a Mexican prison but escaped. He’s in SuperMax now.

I finished my visit to the Mob Museum in a speakeasy. Special medicines may or may not have been consumed. Sorry, no pictures of any alleged consumption.